


Fear

by rabidsamfan



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-21
Updated: 2009-10-21
Packaged: 2018-01-11 22:05:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidsamfan/pseuds/rabidsamfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson contemplates during WW1</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fear

**Author's Note:**

> beta thanks to janeturenne. While this was inspired by the weekend writing prompt, it isn't really in the spirit of Halloween. I'm not sure I'd call it darkfic, but it isn't bright, either.

I have been asked why I was so quick to forgive Holmes after three years of thinking him dead, both admired for it, and chided. It was, after all, a monstrous thing to do to anyone, some say, and I cannot disagree with them. But I was there, in that room, and saw the look in my friend's eyes as he confessed to the deception. He was afraid, then, and I would have done much more than accept his apology if it meant vanquishing that fear. A man cannot survive long on terror and trepidation.

And I wanted so very much for him to be alive.

I wonder if he will forgive me, now the tables are turned? There's nothing left of the aid station I was standing in three months ago, no witnesses left to report my flight. The Germans have swarmed across no-man's land, and the trenches we carved out for ourselves shelter them now, at least until the next bloodletting.

And I am cowering in a brothel in Paris, trading my medical skills for thin soups and bread, a cot in the attic, and the silence of the madame.

No one knows I still exist; Holmes least of all. Indeed, I am not so very sure of it myself. My arms are a moonscape of pricks and scars, my hypocrisy bare to all the world, but I cannot sleep without morphine now. And even morphine does not stop the dreams.

The nightmares.

I do not dream of mud or trenches, brown and green woolens soaked with rain and tinpot helmets set askew on broken skulls. I dream of desert heat and winter cold, of scarlet coats and blue, and bloodstained khakis of every imaginable shade that could be made by improvisation and an excess of cold tea. I do not dream of the roar of aeroplanes and the growl of motorcycles, but the huffing of camels and the steady plodding of horses and mules on hardpacked dirt roads. I do not dream of the rumble of artillery barrages without cease, but of the shouts of zealots and the crack of Jezail rifles.

But the smell of corpses is the same. God, will I ever get the stench out of my nose again? What a fool I was to think I could go back to war!

Some nights I work myself to exhaustion tending the other refugees from the front lines who shelter here briefly before fleeing themselves and the firing squad. I would face condemnation, myself, if there weren't still one soul on this good green earth who would find my disgrace unbearable.

Perhaps, when I am sure that he thinks me dead, I shall double my nightly dose, and double it again and again, until the fear fades away and there is only rest.

Perhaps. I do not know.

But oh for the chance to see his eyes once more, and pray that he will banish the fear in mine!

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted here: http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/206270.html


End file.
